Chapter Text
Casey asks him out on a date with his gaze glued to the ground and his voice in a near whisper. It gives Colt momentary pause because they've been on dates– or they had been on things that had felt like dates. Where Casey will drive them to dinner and they'll talk and look at each other with shy and knowing smiles and afterward Casey will speed through the empty streets with his hand laid lightly over Colt's. Those had been dates, hadn't they?
Only, it was an unspoken label Colt had placed on those meetings and now that Casey stands in front of him shyly, he isn't sure that they were dates.
He feels bamboozled, slightly. He's never been in much of anything anyone would call a relationship before, he had been on dates with other people but nothing had ever really stuck. This strange teetering they were doing between something platonic and romantic was hard to keep up with. At least it seems to be reaching a tipping point.
Colt says, yes— of course, in a way that feels like exhaling a breath of relief that if he thinks about too hard is a bit embarrassing, but it's not like it matters all that much because Casey tells him to be ready by seven. He doesn't say much else, even when Colt presses him for details about what they'll be doing. He just smiles and kisses Colt gently before saying that he's going to be late for work if he doesn't go now.
That was this morning, Colt had spent the rest of the day feeling like there were butterflies in his stomach fluttering their little wings so hard that they make him lighter. He's practically walking on air as he goes through his routine, it's his day off so there isn't much too do but he does it all with a wide smile on his face.
He doesn't think he's ever been this happy about doing his laundry before, it doesn't even bother him when he has to rewash a few shirts he wore to set this week because there was dirt seemingly caked to the strands that held the fabric together.
It's six forty-five and his apartment is a mess. Colt isn't sure he's ever been this nervous before. They had done this a thousand times already, just the label made it feel nerve wracking. He had put on dress pants and was considering a suit jacket before realizing how stupid it all was. There was no need to fuss over his appearance, Casey had seen him in practically ever state and never complained about any of his looks. As a matter of fact, Casey tended to check him out the most right after shoots where he was caked with dirt and fake blood.
He ends up in his Miami Vice jacket over a plain shirt and jeans that don't have holes in them, which for as long as he had to search for them, he wagers they're fancy enough for a first date.
Colt thinks it's a nice enough outfit right up until the second he hears Casey knock on his front door. He feels silly, insecure in a way he hadn't been since his face was spotty from puberty.
He finds that it doesn't matter all that much when he opens the door to find Casey in his signature scorpion jacket, sporting a small smile. His smile grows a bit when he looks behind Colt at the horrendous mess his apartment had become while he was trying to get ready. He pulls Colt into a chaste kiss and Colt melts a bit at the feeling of Casey's smile against his mouth.
"You ready to go?" He asks, stepping back. Colt nods locking his door before following Casey out to wherever their destination is.
Casey ends up taking him to a restaurant he had mentioned once, months ago, in passing— he had made some vague throw away comment about how he had wanted to go when they opened but how it seemed wrong to go on his own because the atmosphere of the space was a bit romantic.
It makes something in his chest ache, to be held so close in Casey's mind that the man remembers something so unimportant.
He doesn't say anything about the location when they pull in and the valet takes the keys to Casey's car, he doesn't have to because he looks over to his date with wonder in his eyes and Casey looks back with a wide smile on his face like he's won the lottery.
It's a nice place, not too nice where he would've felt underdressed but nice enough that it fits some mental schema he has of a good first date place. To be fair, any first date with Casey would probably fit into the box of an ideal first date.
He watches as Casey leads them to the front, telling the host that they had reservations— "Should be under the name Daley," Casey had said. Which had Colt staring with his eyebrows raised. Sure it may be their first date on paper but he's just now learning Casey's name after just a little less than a year of knowing each other.
Sometimes it shocks Colt how little he actually knows about Casey, but the lack of knowledge usually matters to him a lot less when he finds out a small tidbit Casey. How important was name when Colt knows how he likes come down from the adrenaline spike after stunts or how he sleeps— curled in on himself, he tended to stick very strictly to his side of the bed, and wasn't that something on it's own? That Casey has his own side of Colt's bed.
He finds himself knee deep in a spiel not long after they sit down at their table. "Ryder tells everyone he does his own stunts, which is ridiculous because my name's in the credits and sometimes he'll tell people on set that he does his own stunts, pretty much immediately after they watch me do it. He keeps going around telling people he does his own stunts, which is okay I'm not really in it for the recognition I just like the rush of it all. And it's not like my name isn't in the credits for his stunt work–" he pauses, he's not really sure if talking about a coworker he hates is proper first date conversation material but when he looks over at Casey the man is staring at him, drinking in every word and looking entirely enamored.
Colt feels the tips of his ears heat and he ducks his head slightly. He nearly forgot it was Casey, Casey who would listen to him talk about everything and give him nothing less than his full attention. "How's work at the garage?"
Casey had started working at a shop not long after the first movie they shot together wrapped. It had surprised Colt at first, he didn't know many stuntmen who didn't throw themselves into stunts entirely. It was rare to see someone work another job on top of stunts in a way not born from necessity.
It had made more sense when he heard Casey talk about cars. Colt wasn't new to hearing people pour about their passions— he had listened to many an actor or director talk about their passion projects— but hearing Casey talk about cars was something entirely different.
He's magnificent, Colt wants to drink him in, the way he's so certain about himself when he talks about cars. He loves him, he knows this completely, but seeing Casey about cars like they're a part of him makes Colt fall in love a little more every time.
Casey smiles like he read Colt's thought process like subtitles lingering beneath him. He talks about what he's working on now, an old car that had sat in storage for years and had recently been inherited by someone who wanted to return it to its former glory. He's in the process of taking it apart so he can put it back together. He sounds as excited as Colt imagines he can get.
Soon enough they're back in Casey's Malibu, stomachs full and hearts light. They end up at a small pond. It feels slightly like Casey googled what to do to make a first date good. Colt can imagine if you look up how to woo a stuntman on wikihow, a play-by-play of this date will show up.
It's nice, even if it's too dark outside to fully appreciate the scenery. They're holding hands as they walk the small dirt path next to the pond, with dim warm lamppost lighting their surroundings enough so that they don't trip over anything. Frogs chirp out their nightly songs around them. It feels like a small pocket of time that belongs entirely to them.
But then, because life is not a wonderful wikihow article, but instead a sequence of events that rarely allow such a peaceful night to stay that way, things start to go wrong. Casey clams up, seemingly out of nowhere. "Let's go back to the car," he says, looking around and pulling Colt by his hand. Colt doesn't get the chance to question the sudden shift as he's pulled along.
The Malibu is at most twenty feet away when a body slams into them, knocking Colt down as he takes the brunt of it. Casey wavers but manages to stay standing, taking a step in front of Colt and glaring at their attacker. There's a thick silence that keeps him glued to the ground as Casey and the man stare at each other.
There's a rock in his hand, Colt has no idea when he reached down to grab it but he can see it catch the light from the lampposts as Casey raises his fist. He swings, holding his hand so the rock makes the most contact with the man's face. He drops like a bag of rocks.
Colt kind of assumes that would be it. Casey would take their attacker down and they could flee the scene together, hands clasped and breath heavy as they recount the daunting encounter.
That's not how it happens.
Casey follows the man down, crouching over him as he brings his fist down again. And again, and again, and oh god again.
It's kind of mesmerizing, the way Casey draws his fist back and slams it into the guys face over and over. Colt's not sure if the man is breathing by the time it clicks to him that this is reality and not a stunt he can watch from the sidelines and he pulls Casey away from him, if he's honest he doesn't even really care.
If Colt stares at the rock gripped tight in Casey's hand long enough he can see the blood caked to it, strands of hair that had gotten caught on the rough edges. He doesn't focus on it, he looks back to Casey, who stares off in the distance as if he's not really there— or at least he doesn't want to be there.
That's what cements it in Colt's brain. If he wasn't sure whether to stay or flee the scene, he knows. He couldn't leave Casey now, not like this. Not when he was just trying to protect them.
"Are you okay." Casey's eyes are wide, pupils dilated. He looks feral. It's probably in poor taste, there's likely a corpse of Casey's making sitting not even a foot away, but Colt thinks he looks hot, like he does right after shooting a stunt when his adrenaline is at its peak.
He glances over Casey's hand, it's seen better days. They'll need to get somewhere to clean the wounds, they need to get out of here for reasons far more grave than a wounded hand. Colt momentarily worries about being charged with abetting manslaughter, but his thoughts are cut short when Casey makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, coming back to himself.
Colt can see it, the fear in Casey's eyes— it's the same quiet fear he had been harboring in his tired eyes for so many months. For the first time Colt wonders if this is a common occurrence for the man. For the second time tonight he wonders if he knows Casey at all. He decides it doesn't matter, not now, not with Casey staring at him like that.
He flinches back when Colt reaches to touch him. "Case," he says it softly, holding out his hand in hopes that the man will reach back. He won't, he's covered in blood and self loathing. Colt doesn't know how to recover from this.
Not because he's afraid, even if he should be, but because he could see a change in Casey. The man had tried so hard to hide this— to be good, to be someone Colt deserves. But now, covered in someone else's blood and shaking like a leaf, Casey has already decided it was over.
"It's okay." Casey shakes his head and Colt knows it's not— he really does, the words tasted like ash in his mouth the second he had spoken them. He knows that it's not okay, but he also knows that he needs to, in this moment, convince Casey that it is.
He reaches for Casey's hands slowly, the way one would approach a wounded animal. He keeps his eyes on Casey's as he wraps his hands around the man's wrists. There's a look behind them makes him sick to his stomach, far more than the act of violence did. Casey looks terrified, like he's only allowing Colt to hold him because he fears any other reaction.
He wants to bolt, Colt can tell. For some reason that turns his stomach inside out just as much as it makes something in his brain sing at how well he knows the man. “It's going to be okay,” Colt says, in a voice broaching desperate. He’s holding Casey’s wrists too tight, he knows he is. It’s just scary, he doesn’t want to let go. “We can figure this out, it'll be fine. Please, it's okay."
Casey looks pained. He turns his head to the side, looking away. It hurts, in some stupidly selfish way, that Casey is refusing to look at him. For a moment tonight, Colt thought the man would never look away. “You’ve got me all wrong, you’ve built someone in your head and you’ve put them in my place. You don’t want me, Colt.”
“Of course I want you, Casey. That's such bullshit." Casey exhales harshly through his nose, letting his disbelief out. "I'm sorry, it is. I don't want some idealized version of you, it's awful but I don't care about what you just did because it was you. I'd take any version of Casey you give me and love him, you have to know that.” He drags Casey closer by his wrists, he wants to pull him into a hug but it’d be too much for him right now. He's still shaking under Colt’s touch. “You’re a good person. You’ve been good to me, I don’t care about anything else.”
He grabs Casey's face gently, entirely uncaring of the sticky blood splatter. Casey cares, Colt shakes his head as he tries to pull away. "I'm dirty," Casey says, staring wide eyed in a way that made Colt believe that he wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and have all of this be a bad dream.
"We can go back to my place." He drags his thumb just underneath Casey's eye, smearing the blood. It should be off putting, this should all be fucking horrific, but it's Casey. It's Casey, who smiles at him softly and takes him on drives and eats his food in the mornings and tells him it tastes great even if he messes something up. "You can shower, get clean."
Casey shakes his head vehemently. "I can't." It feels like the floor falls out from beneath him. He's free falling into seemingly endless void, he probably has been since the moment Casey picked up that rock, but he feels it fully now. His blood rushes in his ears like wind around him as he drops through nothing. There's nothing to land on if Casey won't come home.
Colt sucks in a breath, it feels like he's breathing through a coffee stirrer, a tiny hole allowing just enough air for his lungs to fill while aching something fierce at how much energy it takes for what should be such a simple task. "You can't come back?"
"I can't wash it away." He sounds so tortured that Colt wants to drag them both to the ground and curl around Casey, if only to protect him from the outside world. It pains him how little he can do.
He was acutely aware how much he hovered just at the edge of Casey's life before but he had never felt so helpless to it before. He had always managed to get Casey through whatever burdens weighed at him. He can't fix it as easily this time, he can't pull Casey to the couch and tuck himself as close as the man will allow as a movie plays quietly on the TV. He can't fix this with a gentle night.
That doesn't mean he can't find a new way to fix it. "I'm not asking you to." He doesn't need Casey to be better than whatever happened, he needs Casey however he can get him.
Casey sighs, tired and bloody. Colt can see the resignation behind his eyes, he can see the lingering want to flee. Nonetheless, Casey follows as Colt leads them the rest of the way back to the car. Neither of them look back at the body. Colt's going to find a way to fix this, he thinks as he opens the passenger side door for Casey, who hesitates before getting in.
Colt is slow to the driver side, he focuses a little too hard on taking even steps and he keeps his eyes on the ground, mostly so he doesn't look up to the lump of a man down the path. He takes a deep breath before he opens the car door.
It's only halfway home that Colt realizes that it's his first time driving the Malibu. Something about that, more than anything else, fuels the desperate want. He will find a way to fix this.